Same Sex Marriage Roundtable Discussion
Corning (NY) Community College
11 March 2010
Preliminary Remarks
In light of the media attention focused on various “Christian” groups that are either promoting or accepting of same sex marriage one can get a skewed view of what Christianity has taught on the subjects. It must be remembered that the view I present today, the view that rejects the notion of same sex marriage, is the traditional Christian view 1 from the beginning as well as the view of the vast majority of Christians today; and this is also certainly the view of traditional Judaism and Islam.
Christians have historically regarded the Bible as the word of God and regarded the Bible as the source and norm of all doctrine. Looking at the Bible, Christians recognize that marriage is a holy estate instituted by God. Accepting the Bible’s report, we see that it is actually the first Divine institution. It was instituted by God in Paradise, the Garden of Eden, when He made a wife for the first man, brought her to him and blessed their union to be one flesh
We see that God gave marriage for several reasons:
1. God saw that it was not good for the man be alone—man was incomplete—so God made the man a helper fit, suitable, for him. Literally the text reads: like his opposite. Think here how different men and women are from each other and yet how complimentary and fitting they are to each other.2
2. Procreation: God’s first command to this man and woman is to bear children and so share in God’s on-going creative activity.3
3. Intimacy: He created them with a sexual drive and a need for intimate fellowship (in part to fulfill the command to procreate) that drives people from father and mother to establish a family in which next generation would be nurtured in human love to worship God. Thus God established marriage for the procreation of children and raising them in the fear love and knowledge of Him.
It is clear that
- Marriage was to increase the happiness of both man and woman.
- God created male/ female for the sake of marriage and the family (ie, procreation) rather than marriage as one among many expressions of sexuality.
- We are to embrace our sexuality as male or female. Husband and wife are different but one—like a violin and the bow, you need both.
- He created a family (Adam and Eve), not just random individuals. Everything was very good.
4. After God established marriage between the first man and woman He created, the Bible reports that sin entered the world. This also affected marriage. à Now sex would no longer be what God had intended; now sin-corrupted human nature, shown by its self-centeredness, emerged. So to protect marriage God would give the 6th Commandment, the one against adultery. Now, after the fall into sin, marriage also has another purpose—to keep people from falling into immorality.4
Long story short, monogamous marriage between one man and one woman is the only form of marriage instituted by God for all times.5
WE ARE HAVING THIS DISCUSSION TODAY BECAUSE ALTHOUGH MARRIAGE IS A DIVINE INSTITUTION, IT IS ALSO A CIVIL STATUS GOVERNED BY THE STATE.
Marriage is a world-wide and history-wide phenomenon because the idea of marriage has been implanted in us by God. That’s why it has been found from earliest recorded secular history and has been preserved to us down to this very hour. We all still have the same drive instilled in us by God for procreation and intimacy.
Because marriage is a good thing and the state recognizes it as such, that it is beneficial to the state—truly a foundation and bedrock of any ordered society—the state regulates it.
Whereas the Christian/ Church judges all things according to the Word of God, the state uses reason. As marriage is seen as something good to the state, it wants to preserve it and promote outward peace, virtue and law.6
Marriage, then, also becomes a civil status of a civil character entered upon by contract; thus marriage is determined by the civil laws of the state which are grounded upon human reason (which is corrupted by sin, thus imperfect). Because the State is governed by reason and its own interests, the State in its laws governing marriage may come short of the divine laws (in “no fault” divorce for example) or it may go beyond those laws (marriage of cousins for example).
Whenever the State laws fall short of the divine laws, the Christian must always obey the divine laws; when the State goes beyond the divine laws, the Christian must obey the State law when he can do so without transgressing a divine law and violating his conscience.
Because marriage is not only a civil status but also a divine institution, the Christian/ Church doesn’t just look at the laws of the state but also to God’s revealed will in the Bible,7 which gives explicit rules and directions to be observed in reference to entering upon marriage.
This means that in the same sex marriage debate we are bound; there are acts or relationships to which we cannot consent without stepping beyond the limits the Creator has set out for His creatures.
Same sex marriage does not fulfill the divinely given purposes of marriage. It is not between one man and one woman, where the one completes what is lacking in the other. There is no natural procreation. Nor does same sex marriage keep people from falling into immorality; instead it promotes immorality as the Bible throughout regards homosexuality as sin.
The Biblical prohibitions against homosexuality in the OT were not part of the Political law of the Israelites but of the Moral law—that declaration of God’s will that directs and binds people of every age and place. For example, God prohibited His people from homosexuality.8 The NT abolished the Israelite Political and Ceremonial Law which were only meant to be temporary until the coming of the Messiah. But the NT restates and reaffirms the OT Moral code also in reference to marriage and sexual perversions.9
The duty of the Christian Church in this debate is to be the voice of conscience, the voice of God’s law that speaks to the conscience of all. The Christian realizes that the law of the state will not always reflect divine law but ours is the prophetic voice proclaiming God’s word. We fully realize that the divine will, Law, may not be obeyed. If the State allows marriages which God forbids, we must obey God and not recognize or perform these same sex marriages.10
The Church will also not fail in its role to speak out against this act which is contrary to and a mockery of the will of God. Christians realize that there may be negative consequences for their actions from the state or society in general. But so be it.
1. “God created man and woman and joined them.” (Luther, AE, VII pg. 146)
“If God, out of extraordinary kindness, had not instituted this union of one man and one woman, with what great desire the whole world would long for it, so that it could be freed from lust and defilement through this remedy! But we scorn this law union He has sanctioned in a perpetual and firm law by which He forbids fornication and promiscuity. He commands you to choose for yourself one woman who pleases you and with whom you should spend your life.” (Luther, AE, V, pg. 34)
2. Gen. 2. 18-24 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." 19 So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,
"This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
3. Gen. 1.28; And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
4. 1 Cor 7. 2-9: But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. 7 I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. 8 To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. 9 But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.
5. 3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" 4 He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh'? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." (Mt. 19.4-6)
It is also well to note that polygamy is not encouraged in the Old Testament, but tolerated. In fact, it is convincingly argued that the examples of polygamy all show the problems and troubles that result from departing from God’s intent.
6. Ancient Rome serves as an excellent example.
- Roman authors such as Juvenal [Satire 6 sexually loose morals of women who gave themselves to gladiators, actors, etc], Ovid [Ars Amatoria sex had become sadistic], Martial, Catullus [Palatine Anthology 5.49 refers to group sex] indicate that promiscuous and depraved sexual activity.
- Edward Gibbons History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [Penguin 1994] sexual morality broke down after end of Punic Wars 146 BC. Roman marriage deteriorated, becoming a “loose and voluntary compact [and] religious and civil rites were no longer essential.” [Gibbons 2.813]
- Tacitus [Annals 3.34] sexual immorality so pronounced that a chaste wife was seen as a rarity.
- Such practices threatened institution of marriage so Caesar Augustus 18 BC enacted lex Julia de adulteriis to curb people’s addiction to widespread illicit sex, but it only punished the married woman in the adulterous act. Adultery defined in terms of a woman’s marital status, not a man’s. A man could commit adultery with another’s wife because she was his property and adultery was a property offense. If married woman registered as prostitute could not be accused of adultery since no longer exclusively belonged to her husband.
{Source: How Christianity Changed the World, Alvin J. Schmidt, Zonderavan, 2004}
7. Mt.19.3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" 4 He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh'? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." 7 They said to him, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?" 8 He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery." 10 The disciples said to him, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry." 11 But he said to them, "Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it." Jesus did not direct His questioners to go to civil courts (like He did in inheritance Lk. 12.14: 13 Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." 14 But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?") but went to Scripture.
8. Lev. 18.3: You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes [and later in the chapter He threatens punishment if they do it]. Lev. 18 (.22): You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
9. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. (1 Cor. 5.1); Rm 1. 24-27. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
1 Corinthians 6.9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
10. But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5.29)